Nathan's Notebook
|
|
|
---by
Nathan Bierma
Column:
Blogs:
Book:
Friends:
Strands:
|
NBierma.com > Notebook
from Twitter
| Follow me!
Monday, January 13, 2003
I was a contributing reporter to a Tribune investigation on the destruction of designated potential landmarks by the city of Chicago. The 3-part series began this morning. www.chicagotribune.com/landmarks Saturday, January 11, 2003
Voit trial update: The woman I wrote about in an investigative feature at NBierma.com was found guilty yesterday in a trial that took less than one week. http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/lake/chi-0301100185jan10,1,3308776.story http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/lake/chi-0301080230jan08,1,4816109.story Read my feature here on the background of this family living the idyllic Chicago suburb of Golf. • Places&Culture File from 
• Previous P&C The NYT reviews the new book Measuring America: Jefferson, Washington, Madison and Hamilton wanted the mapping done by decimal measurement. The flood of settlers and speculators already spilling westward meant that there was no time to work out the new and still disputed system. Measurement would be made by a device already in use for some 150 years: the surveyor's chain, 66 feet long and 80 chains to the mile. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/26/books/26EDER.html • Money&Culture File from
• Previous M&C • Etymology Today from M-W: marmoreal \mahr-MOR-ee-ul\ : of, relating to, or suggestive of marble or a marble statue especially in coldness or aloofness >William surveyed Agnes with marmoreal coolness, his features rigid and disapproving. Most marble-related words in English were chiseled from the Latin noun "marmor," meaning "marble." "Marmor" gave our language the word "marble" itself in the 12th century. It is also the parent of "marmoreal," which has been used in English since the mid-1600s. "Marbleize," another "marmor" descendant, came later, making its print debut around 1859. E.T. bonus: Greek phraseology, also from M-W: omphaloskepsis \ahm-fuh-loh-SKEP-sis\ : contemplation of one's navel as an aid to meditation; also : indisposition to motion, exertion, or change >Mystics of the Middle Ages practiced omphaloskepsis, believing that concentrating on a single focal point such as the navel would help them experience divine light and glory. Greek mythology holds that Zeus released two eagles, one from the east and one from the west, and made them fly toward each other. They met at Delphi, and the spot was marked with a stone in the temple of the oracle there, a stone they named "omphalos," Greek for "navel" (it supposedly marked the center of the world). Mystics have been practicing omphaloskepsis for centuries, but it wasn't until the early 1920s that English speakers combined "omphalos" with another Greek term, "skepsis" (which means "examination," not "skepticism"), to create a word for studying one's own middle and thinking deeply. • Previous E.T. Monday, January 06, 2003
Latest article: The Tribune killed this piece so I'm publishing it through NBierma.com. I spent six months investigating the salacious story of Sharon Voit, a suburban Chicago homemaker who is charged with trying to hire a hit man to kill her dentist husband. The trial begins today in Skokie. You can’t find a smaller, quieter, leafier suburb than Golf, the lush village north of Chicago. Railroad baron Albert J. Earling put Golf on the map in the early 20th Century by ordering his trains stop there so he could play golf at what is now Glenview Country Club. Today, with a population of a few hundred, and without any stores, mailboxes, or gas stations, Golf is home to little more than the stately red brick colonial building that houses the Western Golf Association, which runs the PGA Western Open, the annual professional golf tournament played in Lemont, Ill. In this tranquil setting—a village with no annual crime rate—prosecutors say Sharon Voit plotted her husband’s demise. http://www.nbierma.com/writing/030106.html Saturday, January 04, 2003
My latest Tribune article: On the merits of the Weatherbug and other weather forecasting via the Web: http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/chi-0301010309jan01,1,7130455.story • My Tribune archive • Places&Culture File from
If there is a national symbol of French cuisine, it has to be the cook who searches for the freshest of ingredients at the best prices and then lovingly transforms them into hearty stews and delicate sauces. But the French, like household chefs nearly everywhere, have steadily cut in half the time they spend in the kitchen. In recent years, with varying degrees of passion and stealth, they have embraced frozen foods, too. In 2001, for example, the average Frenchman consumed 66 pounds of frozen food products, compared with only 4 pounds in 1960. A poll cited in Le Figaro last January revealed that 75 percent of respondents believed that "one can eat right if one eats frozen." Not that this has eliminated the stigma. Picard, France's best-known frozen food retail chain, is so closely associated with, well, the ordinary, that it can never aspire to the cachet of a gourmet emporium like Fauchon or Hédiard. • Previous P&C • Sports&Culture File from
-The often-asserted but widely ignored assertion that the dubiously educational football program is a college's pact with the devil in terms of both money and principles is applied to one small college in football-crazy Florida in this NY Times Magazine piece by MIchael Sokolove: "Football is the S.U.V. of the college campus: aggressively big, resource-guzzling, lots and lots of fun and potentially destructive of everything around it." http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/22/magazine/22FOOTBALL.html • Previous S&C Say what? An ad in Museums Chicago magazine proclaims, "You haven't seen Chicago until you've seen Bloomingdales." Huh? Chicago is one of the most eclectic conglomerations of distinctive cultures in the world, and this bland department store claims a corner on the city's unique cultural identity? B-dales needs to get a life--as does the corpse-like pale model clutching a plain gray shawl in the ad, leering but lifeless. • Architecture Watch from
• Previous A.W. • History&Today What will 2003 be remembered for? The Tribune assembled a panel of educated guessers in various areas of life. The edcuation entry is provocative: John Katzman, CEO of the Princeton Review: -Benjamin Franklin biographer Edmund S. Morgan on Franklin and New Year's resolutions: Perhaps it is basic to our national character, this habit of giving ourselves instructions for living right. ... In his autobiography, Franklin tells how he molded his career with a set of resolutions that he drafted as a young man (and adhered to more successfully than most of us ever do for one short year). He ... declares that he has "conceiv'd the bold and arduous Project of arriving at moral Perfection." ... He sums it up in a list of 13 virtues: temperance, silence, order, resolution, frugality, industry, sincerity, justice, moderation, cleanliness, tranquility, chastity and humility. Except for chastity, what do these have to do with what most people mean by morality? The whole list sounds more like today's New Year's resolutions than it does like a redaction of the Ten Commandments. But Franklin took it seriously, and since it has earned him so much opprobrium from the likes of D. H. Lawrence and Mark Twain, it is worth asking why. • Previous H&T • Etymology Today from M-W: munificent \myoo-NIH-fuh-sunt\ 1 : very liberal in giving or bestowing : lavish 2 : characterized by great liberality or generosity "Munificent" was formed back in the late 1500s when English speakers, perhaps inspired by similar words such as "magnificent," altered the ending of "munificence." "Munificence" in turn comes from "munificus," the Latin word for "generous," which itself comes from "munus," a Latin noun that is variously translated as "gift," "duty," or "service." "Munus" has done a fine service to English by giving us other terms related to service or compensation, including "municipal" and "remunerate." Continuing an optimistic, can-do etymological start to 2003... E.T. bonus: Latin phraseology, also from M-W: factotum \fak-TOH-tuhm\ 1 : a person having many diverse activities or responsibilities 2 : a general servant "Do everything!" That's a tall order, but it is exactly what a factotum is expected to do. It's also a literal translation of the New Latin term "factotum," which in turn traces to the Latin words "facere" ("to do") and "totum" ("everything"). In the 16th century, "factotum" was often used in English as if it was a surname, paired with first names to create personalities such as "Johannes Factotum" (literally "John Do-everything"). Back then, it wasn't necessarily desirable to be called a "factotum"; the term was a synonym of "meddler" or "busybody." Now the word is more often used for a handy, versatile individual responsible for many different tasks. • Previous E.T. Tuesday, December 31, 2002
This is my last chance to wish readers Happy Holidays, or, as one of my favorite Christmas cards of all time (thanks Ruth!) put it: To Whom It May Concern: Today I am reminded that 2002 wasn't any old year in my life. I graduated from college, married Andrea, moved to downtown Chicago, started working for the Tribune, wrote the first two chapters of my book. I have known the highest thrills of my life along with the darkest, loneliest moments that mark such transitions. It's as hard to believe that both fit so tightly in the span of one year as it is to consider that tomorrow begins another 365-day cycle of life (however artificial a distinction it is). And so my hope for 2003 is profoundly different from this day last year: I hope for more of the same--more of the same fulfillment in my writing, my living downtown, my marriage. I hope Andrea and I adjust to living with each other and function more smoothly, and I similarly hope for some measure of stability in the occasionally frustrating relationship I have with the Tribune as a freelancer. And as with last year, I hope for a sense of direction in the midst of the questions and choices that face Andrea and me. I can only return to my entry for my 23rd birthday this year, September 26, to sum up my thoughts on New Year's Eve: "[It] humbles me [to see] the blessings God has granted. If my life contributes in some small way to his kingdom, year in and year out--only then (in addition to the worth he grants through grace) does this meager milestone of the universal speck of my life count for anything." Nobody writes like Steve Rushin. Nobody uses words like he does; nobody sees things the way he does. You can't say, as you can with most great writers, that he writes like so-and-so, or his style is reminiscent of such-and-such. Rushin is truly unique. He embodies what a professor of mine calls presticogitation--sleight of mind, or thinking that is so swift and impressive that it baffles the observer. An SI editor I showed my college clips to said I was ruining myself by trying to write like Rushin, and he was right. Still, if there's one other writer I'd want to be reincarnated as other than G.K. Chesterton, it would be Rushin. And despite the SI editor's comments, I was innappropriately proud of how Rushinian I thought this piece of mine this summer turned out: http://metromix.com/top/1,1419,M-Metromix-Home-X!ArticleDetail-18015,00.html All of which is an introduction to saying that CNNSI.com finally has a link up to Rushin's columns: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/inside_game/archives/steve_rushin/ I was about to re-subscribe to SI with Rushin in mind; now I don't have to. Still, I feel the same way about this as I do about Catherine Zeta-Jones doing cell phone commercials--it's like filet mignon being served at Wendy's. A higher form of something in a cheapening context. Zeta-Jones ruins any semblance of big screen mystigue by having her image splattered over TV screens. Rushin's words have an aesthetic transcendence when affixed to the glossy page--now, he's one of 4,971,342 Americans writing on the Web about sports. Still, I'm thrilled. I proposed a story on gerund newsspeak to Columbia Journalism Review while in New York, but it didn't materialize. I was just referred to an excellent story on the distasteful phenomenon in the NY Times: temporary link from nytimes.com • Etymology Today from M-W: gormandize \GOR-mun-dyze\ : to eat greedily "Gormandize" entered English in the mid-1500s as a modification of "gourmand," a noun borrowed from French in the 15th Century. "Gourmand" is a synonym of glutton and was originally fairly disparaging in tone. Likewise, "gormandize" was an unflattering term when it first came into use. But since the 19th century the meaning of "gourmand" has softened (probably under the influence of "gourmet," which is quite complimentary). "Gourmand" now usually suggests someone who likes good food in large quantities but is not necessarily a slobbering glutton. "Gormandize" is still not especially flattering, but it can imply that a big eater has a discriminating palate as well as a generous appetite. 'Tis the season. Incidentally, M-W.com has finally put up a link to its e-mail Word-of-the-Day newsletter: http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/mwwod.pl • Previous E.T. Saturday, December 28, 2002
• Quote of the Day "Nice to see things are finally going your way." David Letterman, to Tom Hanks, on the success of "My Big Fat Greek Wedding," which Hanks and his wife Rita Wilson helped to turn into a movie. • Number of the Day: 671 Thousands of American homes that have outhouses, as opposed to 510 thousand that have TiVo, according to Advertising Age. • Previous Quote and Number I trimmed this from my book manuscript about integrating heaven and worldview, but I thought I'd retain it here. As the scope of my faith grows, so does the scope of my doubts, but what has been a comforting realization for me over the last couple years is that it is as hard not to believe as it is to believe. I tied the essay below to this train of thought: When GQ magazine asked celebrity Jennifer Lopez about her third marriage, which came about within months of her second, she said, “I’ve made commitments to people and done things that I thought were right at the time. I just follow my heart. You do what you need to do at the time for what you need at the time.” Listen carefully: it sounds vague and dismissive, but it’s actually a profession of faith, a declaration of a moral philosophy that integrates Lopez’s belief and behavior. This is longer than most thought postings, so you can click here to skip to the next entry, Places&Culture. Thought of the day: Why atheism is a faith Human beings of at least childlike mental ability are incapable of separating their beliefs from their actions, or they will experience what psychologists call cognitive dissonance. So it’s not a question of whether you believe in something or not. It’s what you believe, and how your beliefs resonate with your life, the biblical story, and the world you see around you. To declare that the deity does not exist, that life is purposeless and random, that religious wisdom is invalid, that Truth is a farce, and that heaven is a silly dream, is to articulate a belief system about the contours of human existence. Which is impossible without faith. The sales pitch for atheism is that it’s sensible and level-headed, but in truth it requires an emaciating tug on the imagination, and a diligence in the face of life’s withering persecution of the human will to believe. To not believe in God is as hard for a finite, meager mortal to think and declare as to believe in God. As Christians must wrestle with the vexing question of how there can be a God if there is pain and suffering in the world, so atheists must struggle with the question of how there cannot be a God with joy and pleasure in the world. There is no logical, scientific answer for why sex is enjoyable or chocolate tastes good—reproduction and sustenance could be unremarkably functional in order for life to go on. As a Christian I would argue that the two—belief in God, belief in no God—are not equal in degree of difficulty; the latter is more difficult, since it must be done without the aid of inspiration in the face of natural wonder, the resonance of the Logos or word of God, the solidarity of a throng of believers past and present, and the stark fact that the potentially intolerable chaos of social order is at times, even often, livable and enjoyable. Take each of these segments by themselves, and they may not be all that convincing (or they may). But when taken as an inspiring whole, the sum is greater than the parts. For me, the most inescapable view of God is that of artist and designer. Someone has to answer for the profound fact that the pageant of natural and social life plays out day to day, century to century, without imploding on itself—much less that this pageant can at times bring joy and peace. “Whoever is responsible,” writes Philip Yancey, “is a fierce and imcomparable artist beside whom all human achievement and creativity dwindle as child's play.” To view a Monet painting and believe that the form and beauty of the work could not come from a random splattering of meaninglessly projected paint droplets is to understand the logic of believing in intelligent design, and the illogic of denying it. To view nature and society, more amazing than a million Monets, is to see it as a work of both imaginative art and practical engineering, and to then trace it back to the author. “There [is] something personal in the world, as in a work of art,” said G.K Chesterton. “Magic must have a meaning, and meaning must have someone to mean it." On the other hand, it takes faith to belittle the splendor of a sunrise. Or, as Chesterton said, "The worst moment for the atheist is when he is really thankful and has no one to thank." Indeed, even though we know that God uses evolution in his management of the natural world—and may have even used it to bring the natural world into being—this is just a description of a master at work, like a biography of Michelangelo. Oddly, faith and science are often seen to be at odds. But the more we learn about science, the more adjectives we have for God. And the more we sense that the world is not stagnant but is a work in progress—is building toward something. As the apostle Paul says, God will bring his work “to completion.” Ever since the Enlightenment responded to the history-wide plague of narrow-minded religious institutions with a detached belief in science and rationality (and who is the mastermind behind those?), the assumption developed and remains dominant in our society today that it is more logical and less sentimental to not believe in God. Could it be that the true zealots are those who see the stars and remain defiant, and that believers are sometimes the ones who make the most sense? None of this is to try to logically prove God or fully discredit athiesm, either of which is impossible. Trying to fully comprehend God is like trying to run Windows98 on a pocket calculator—we just don’t have the cognitive and spiritual equipment. To experience fellowship with God is a spiritual experience that requires the soul stirrings of the Holy Spirit. Besides, the apostle Paul says that now we see as through foggy glass; then we will see in full. It is only to observe and submit that since everyone already functions according to certain beliefs which, throughout life’s experiences, must resonate with the world we see in front of us, we would do well to consider the biblical story, the coherent story of a world made, perverted, saved, and eventually completed. Believing in heaven, then, is not like believing in Santa Claus; it is rather a relevant extension and fulfillment of our faith and our observations about the natural and social world. Since we find ourselves alive in the middle of this existence, staring at the sea or standing on a city street, it would be stubborn to refrain from trying to articulate a coherent system of meaning that begins to define what we see and give meaning to our days. My book in progress: Living in the Hope of Heaven Previous Thought: the ontological privilege of the postmodernist? • Places&Culture from
• Previous P&C • History&Today: George Will's always-intriguing year-in-review column: United Airlines and the Boston diocese of the Roman Catholic Church had reason to remember the aphorism of Frank Borman, who was president of Eastern Air Lines before it went bankrupt: “Capitalism without bankruptcy is like Christianity without Hell.”, Will's annual column features news that played to little fanfare but has lasting significance: A mouse’s genome has been mapped. Humans and mice have about 30,000 genes. Less than 1 percent are unique to either species. http://www.msnbc.com/news/847681.asp • Previous H&T • Arts&Culture File The year in television was all about getting back to normal. Unfortunately, the medium succeeded. By summertime, things were so normal, so far removed from the elevated future some had predicted in the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11, that "American Idol" and, briefly, "The Anna Nicole Show" were sensations. Things were so normal that "The West Wing," a show about issues and governance, had lost viewers so that "The Bachelor," a show about a serial French-kisser from Missouri, could gain them. • Previous A&C 10 fix-its for McDonalds, from 
http://usatoday.com/usatonline/20021212/4695044s.htm Earlier: More advice for the Golden Arches Meant to post this before the Lott fiasco blew over. There's no defending Lott, as I wrote earlier, but there is this letter: Whatever [Lott] meant, people such as Lott critics Al Gore and Jesse Jackson should remember that Thurmond was a Democrat, not a Republican, when he ran for president in 1948. Also, it was the Democratic Party that made Southern Democrats chairmen of most House and Senate committees, where they could block racial progress from the 1870s until the 1960s. And when the civil-rights bills of the 1960s were finally passed, a larger percentage of Republicans voted for them than Democrats.Remember that when Thurmond became a Republican, he had left the party of Confederate President Jefferson Davis and joined the party of Abraham Lincoln. Earlier: Lott unfit for governance From my files, A.O. Scott on reincarnations of Dr. Seuss, from the NY Times Magazine in 2000: http://www.nytimes.com/library/magazine/home/20001126mag-seuss.html • Urban Issues Watch NEW DELHI, Dec. 25 — Birendra Singh normally goes to work hanging off a door of an overloaded bus that belches smoke and goes nowhere fast in New Delhi — India's gritty, traffic-clogged capital of 16 million people. That all changed today when he boarded a new commuter rail system, a part-underground metro seen as a leap forward for this city with about four million vehicles. "It is so beautiful," Mr. Singh said. "Now we have trains like they have in foreign countries." • Previous U.I.W. I thoroughly enjoyed Catch Me If You Can, an entertaining but well-crafted story that reflects the thoughtful touch of Spielberg. It got me thinking about what fascinating stories and personal drama lie behind seemingly unsexy and often neglected headlines--in Catch's case, bank fraud *yawn*. Take this blurb, for example, which was buried in the back pages of Thursday's NY Times. Can you imagine the kind of stories that must lie behind this terse, dry account? LOS ANGELES, Dec. 25 (AP) — A woman has been arrested on charges that she brokered dozens of fake marriages for men from the Middle East and North Africa seeking United States citizenship.... The authorities say Ms. Whiteside, who was charged with three counts of filing a false document and is being held in lieu of $100,000 bail, arranged phony marriages between low-income women in the United States and foreign men, mostly from the Middle East and North Africa. Ms. Whiteside may have set up 200 marriages over several years, the authorities said. She has pleaded not guilty. • Etymology Today from M-W: nonchalant \nahn-shuh-LAHNT\ : having an air of easy unconcern or indifference Since "nonchalant" comes from French and Latin words meaning "not" and "be warm" respectively, it's no surprise that the word is all about keeping one's cool. We can trace "nonchalant" to the French words "non," meaning "no," and "chaloir," meaning "concern." "Chaloir," in turn, comes from the Latin "calere," meaning "to be warm." Synonyms of "nonchalant" include "cool" (as in "she's a politician who keeps cool during a debate"), "composed," (as in "a reporter who is composed and at ease in front of the camera"), and "collected" (as in "a teacher who is collected and well-prepared"). • Previous E.T. Saturday, December 21, 2002
• Latest Tribune article: A miscellany of Christmas Web sites, including why "Miracle on 34th Street" was released in May: http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/lifestyle/chi-0212200289dec20,1,132144.story • My Tribune archive I interviewed a police training specialist this past week, and asked him why he orders his officers not to put their finger on the trigger when they draw their guns. I thought his response, by e-mail, was interesting: We train officers to put their finger on the trigger only when they want a bullet to leave the barrel. There is a natural desire to put the finger on the trigger when one anticipates needing to fire quickly (such as covering a dangerous suspect with his hands hidden from view). However putting the finger on the trigger prematurely increases the risk of an unintentional discharge. The amount of time saved by having the finger already on the trigger is only about 1/3rd of a second. That time savings has to be weighed against the known physiological effects of high stress arousal, such as a loss in finger dexterity and muscles tensing. The fraction of a second lost can be made up through better tactics like using distance and cover to improve an officers ability to react to a threat. ... • Sports&Culture File: As I suspected, the Tiger Woods controversy is now officially in beating-a-dead-horse territory, according to my editor who killed this column from me. If you're keeping score, that makes this a killed column about two killed columns... Such was the self-described "intramural squabbling" at New York Times headquarters over two sports columns about Tiger Woods and the Augusta controversy that people seemed more interested in whether they ran than what they actually said. I'm happy about the former but worried about the latter. Their tone was alarmingly dismissive, with one column basically saying that good-ol-boys-will-be-good-ol-boys, and the best you can do is just line up your putt and try not to notice. "Please, let Tiger Woods just play golf," Dave Anderson wrote. "He's not a social activist." The controversy "isn't Woods's fight any more than it's any other golfer's fight,” Anderson said. "I think there should be women members," he quoted Woods as saying, "but it's not up to me." The controversy may be annoying to Woods, but it happens to be a matter of credibility. Imagine if Woods were a vegetarian but had dinner at a steakhouse. "Hey, I'd rather they didn't serve big slabs of meat," he might say," but the restaurant will serve whatever it wants to serve. I just eat here." To which Anderson might chime in: "C'mon, he's a hungry customer, not a waiter. Just let the man eat." The problem is that being a sports star isn't like being president, where you choose to run and people vote you in. To be a superstar is to be a leader, like it or not. Your influence is like social currency you receive right along with your seven-figure checks, and you spend it one way or another no matter what you do. "I am not a role model," Charles Barkley famously pleaded in a commercial several years ago. Sure he was. So is Woods. Still, athletes and columnists often try to separate sports from the social dynamics that shape them, carving out an escape world that has no context in the real one. This seems pretty silly. Jackie Robinson couldn't pretend he was just a baseball player. Muhammad Ali wasn't just a boxer and Howard Cosell just an announcer. Jimi Hendrix and Madonna couldn't pretend they were just musicians. They were all symbols of social change, and they knew it. For Woods to say he's "just a golfer" seems delusional. You have a responsibility to the society in which you have such a prominent place. Without that awareness, you allow your fans to get cynical about your integrity. A few years ago Woods made a commercial for Nike where he said, "There are still courses in the United States that I am not allowed to play because of the color of my skin.” How crassly commercial and transparently hypocritical to speak out against discrimination only when you get a Nike check for doing so. The difference, many point out, is that Woods isn't a woman. But in Augusta's case, racial and gender discrimination are cut from the same cloth--old-fashioned values from another era, to which the club stubbornly clings as if out of courage. Had Woods come on the scene before 1990, when Augusta invited its first black member, would he still have used the "just a golfer" line to wash his hands of it? The most common remaining complaint, voiced by Harvey Araton, the Times' other initially silenced columnist, is that feminists have bigger fish to fry than worrying about an elitist upper class club like Augusta--ignoring the symbolism such a seat of power would carry. USA Today's Christine Brennan, whose column prompted Martha Burk to write a letter to Augusta in the first place, recently reported that Burk has spent most of the last few months making speeches about an international women's rights treaty, working women in America, and other issues not sexy enough for media saturation. But when Burk grants interviews to reporters about Augusta topic and answers their questions, she gets written off as a self-promoter and a zealot. You fight the battles you can fight when they're right in front of you. That's what Martha Burk is doing. It's what Tiger Woods should be doing too. • Previous Sports&Culture • Etymology Today from M-W: jeopardy \JEH-per-dee\ *1 : exposure to or imminence of death, loss, or injury : danger 2 : the danger that an accused person is subjected to when on trial for a criminal offense Centuries ago, the Old French term "jeu parti" didn't mean "danger," but rather "an alternative" or, literally, "a divided game." That French expression was used for anything that represented an alternative viewpoint or gave two opposing viewpoints. "Jeu parti" passed into Anglo-French as "juparti," and from there it was borrowed into Middle English and respelled "jeopardie." At first, the English word was used to refer to the risks associated with alternative moves in the game of chess. Almost immediately, however, the term came to be used more generally in the "risk" or "danger" sense that it has today. • Previous E.T. Thursday, December 19, 2002
• Sports&Culture The National Basketball Association yesterday awarded its next expansion franchise to Robert L. Johnson, the founder of Black Entertainment Television, making him the first African-American to become the principal owner of a major professional sports team. Mr. Johnson will pay a $300 million expansion fee for the new franchise in Charlotte, N.C., which will begin play in the 2004-5 season. Golf clubs don't hurt people, people do: Gun maker Smith&Wesson will put its name on a line of golf clubs, adding to a non-ballistic repertoire that already includes golf umbrellas and tees. As this columnist points out, it gives a whole new meaning to asking "What'd you shoot?" http://www.usatoday.com/usatonline/20021205/4675375s.htm -Refining Title IX: http://www.usatoday.com/usatonline/20021218/4709970s.htm Sports Beat: Who would have thought there's a "D" in "Dallas"? The Mavericks have become the NBA's new defense department (except, said USA Today on Tuesday, for the Bad Boys-ish Indiana Pacers): http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/27/sports/basketball/27MAVS.html Parity in the AFC, puke-rity in the NFC: 13 of 16 AFC teams have 7, 8, or 9 wins; 4 NFC teams do. 9 NFC teams have 3,4,5, or 6 wins. • Previous Sports&Culture • On Writing Jed Perl, The New Republic There are a great many ways that a writer can approach an artist and each of them is inadequate for one reason or another. An author who aims for a finely detailed view of the artist's life may leave us with only a shadowy sense of the work itself, while the writer who lavishes razor-sharp analytical skills on a particular painting or sculpture can sometimes lose track of that smidgen of matter-of-factness that ties even the loftiest achievement to day-to-day experience. Evaluating visual or documentary evidence is always a complex business. How does an author weigh the firsthand testimony of an artist? What can be extrapolated from the work itself? To what extent should the cultural situation out of which an artist emerges be taken into account, and should this situation be presented as background or as an animating factor in some more immediate sense? And what of the countless man-made objects whose creators remain entirely anonymous or about whom we have only the most fragmentary information? ... • Previous On Writing • On Writing from NBierma.com • Recycle Bin From Blogathon: July 27, 2002 • About Recyle Bin • Previous Recycle Bin |
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Dec. 25 — The musicians of the Iraqi National Symphony Orchestra, elegant in black tie or long black skirts, were just settling into their places on the final night of their Christmas week concerts when the electricity failed and the performance hall was plunged into darkness. For a while afterward, the performance unrolled with a dreamlike quality. A note from the oboe floated through the pitch black, guiding the players tuning their instruments, until candles affixed to the music stands illuminated their scores. The musicians played an initial overture and then the tenor soloist, Emad Jamil, sang the Agnus Dei from Bizet's "L'Arlésienne." But with each turn of the sheet music, the players grew increasingly nervous about the risk of igniting the barely legible pages. So they stopped before the final Bach piano concerto. "We might as well have been playing in Bach's time," Mr. Jamil later joked ruefully. "But at least I could forget myself in the music. For a short period of time there was nothing but music. It's very hard living with the thought that soon we will have another war."
In the living room of Laura Carton's apartment in Manhattan hangs one of her artworks, a photographic portrait of a serene-looking horse. A storm is brewing in the dramatic sky behind the animal. Nothing in the image would suggest that it is the backdrop for a pornographic scene. That, Ms. Carton said, is exactly the point... Because of her fascination with pornography, her training as an artist, and her patience and skill with Adobe Photoshop, Ms. Carton is making inroads in the contemporary art world. Her digitally altered pornographic images recently appeared in two gallery shows in New York and will be part of another next month at White Box in the Chelsea section of Manhattan. ... In studying the backdrops of pornographic scenes, she became interested in the context, in deconstructing the images. "Why aren't the bodies just shot on white backgrounds?" she wondered. The answer, she found, was that pornography, like other storytelling forms, employs narrative technique.
